


Gardens to Grow With

by CTayfics



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Fluff, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Language of Flowers, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 17:32:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9395810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CTayfics/pseuds/CTayfics
Summary: Keyleth’s garden at Grayskull Keep, and what it means to her.  Set pre-stream.





	

As soon as Greyskull Keep was completed, Vox Machina moved in. Nobody was terribly surprised when Keyleth immediately started to roam the grounds. She wandered around the outside of the keep before stopping by a corner of the curtain wall. There was an open patch of grass, cornered in by a sturdy oak tree.

“This is going to be a great garden,” she breathed in excitement.

 

Within days after transferring their belongings to the keep, Vox Machina took to the markets, picking up furnishings for their new home. In addition to buying as many books as she could carry, Keyleth picked up packets of seeds and books on gardening. She studied for days, lounging outside, or in her room’s window seat if the weather was bad.

Soon afterward, Keyleth approached the plot she’d marked out as her future garden. Settling into a meditative state, she focused on the earth of the plot: what it was made of, where it was curled around the oak tree’s roots, the little interrupting stones buried below its surface. Over many hours, she shaped the earth of her garden to her specifications, getting rid of the larger rocks (which caused quite the surprise when one of the rocks shot out of the ground and pegged a sentry in the head). During her meditations, she remembered what she’d learned about gardening and flowers from the Earth Ashari: how they believed that flowers and plants had a language, and how they could protect people.

Her next step was actually planting the seeds. One corner was filled with food: carrots, potatoes, squash, and as many vegetables as she could find, with a smaller patch of herbs next to it. Once the food was planted, she turned to the flower seeds, gathered from plants on her journey and from scruffy vendors in the markets of Emon. She worked her way around the border of garden, thinking of her friends and family as she tucked seeds into small divots of the earth.

The planting complete, she turned a slow circle in the middle of the garden, surveying her work. Closing her eyes, she breathed a focusing breath out and released a plant growth spell into the ground, feeling it ripple outward through her garden, and opened her eyes to riotous colors and scents, a garden well on its way to full growth.

 

The first guest to her garden was actually Trinket, following his nose to the delicious smells from her flourishing plants. She pointed out the flowers she’d planted in his honor, and had gotten a thankful grunt and bear kiss in return. Keyleth’s laughter drew Vex to the garden, trying to find her pet bear, and Vex declared that the view from the top of the oak was good for spying on the others’ rooms in the keep.

Next to visit her garden were Scanlan and Grog, who Keyleth found passed out in her garden one morning, unintentionally collapsed between rows of plants after a long night of enjoyment. She laughed at their dirt-smeared faces, bedecked with loose petals from the flowers they’d disturbed, before she went to get the others’ help.

Tiberius came down to Keyleth’s garden soon after, and spent his visit inquiring about the magical workings that she’d employed to create it, while happily ignoring the honeybees that buzzed around his glittering sorcerer’s robe and scales.

A few weeks later, Keyleth found Pike happily napping beneath the oak tree’s sun-dappled branches. She’d been about to work another plant growth spell, but the druid left her friend to nap instead.

Keyleth caught Percy sneaking into her garden when she was going to water her plants. She had to laugh when he looked guiltily up at her, hands muddy around the roots of a catnip plant, but she showed him how to build the soil around the catnip’s roots, and gave him a big hug afterward.

 

The last one to visit her garden was Vax, who she found leaning up against the garden gate and peering into the plants with curiosity.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, approaching the garden with a new packet of seeds.

“No,” he said. “I’m just looking at all of the flowers. How did you find so many, Keyleth?”

“Well, I just kind of pick them up,” Keyleth said. “Some of them I buy, like these. Some of them I found while I was traveling. The Earth Ashari gave me some, and taught me how to build a garden.”

Vax looked at her. “That’s really neat. Which ones were from the Earth Ashari?”

Keyleth reached around him, opening the gate and stepping over to the herb garden. She knelt down in the dirt and beckoned Vax over. “These ones- dittany, archangelica, and athelas,” she pointed out. “They’re all healing herbs. They also gave me a clipping of aelfengrape, but I don’t have a scaffold built yet for those.”

“What about the other ones, the flowers?” Vax asked.

At that, Keyleth smiled. “Those are ones that I’ve found around. Can I tell you a story about them?”

“Sure?” Vax said, taking a seat next to her. “I’m all ears.”

“Every flower here is one that I’ve planted because it reminds me of one of you guys, or somebody that I’ve met in my travels.”

“That’s really intense,” Vax blinked. “You’ve got flowers for all of us?”

“Yup,” she grinned, and gestured around the garden. “This is you guys, in flower form.”

“Wow,” he breathed, looking around the flowers and plants with a new appreciation. “I have to say, we’re a surprisingly colorful and happy bunch, given the kind of dark shit we seem to get into on a daily basis.”

Keyleth shoved him gently. “But we’re all still growing, just like they are,” she said, surveying the plants: Scanlan’s amaryllis and southernwood, Pike’s chrysanthemums and peonies, Grog’s cornflowers and gerbera, Percy’s hydrangea and lupine, Vex’s lavender and buttercup, Trinket’s heather, Vax’s black Susan and hemlock, and Tiberius’s rue and snapdragon. Together, they were a bright spot of color against the dark earth and the drab stone of the keep’s outer wall.

Vax was quiet for a few more minutes, before rising and dusting the dirt from his leggings. “Thank you for sharing this with me, Keyleth,” he said, offering her a hand up. She took it and let herself be pulled to her feet. “It’s good to be rooted somewhere.”

“Yeah, it is,” she grinned back.


End file.
